The Preamp Kit

If you are in doubt as to whether a kit amplifier project is suitable for you, we
suggest you spend £10.00 on buying the instructions for the Kit 1, single 300B amplifier.
This will give you a good idea whether a kit project is for you. If you do decide to buy a
kit then the £10.00 will be refunded against the cost of the kit. We have the Kit 1
manual available in English, German and Italian, please specify when ordering.

Loudspeaker Drivers & Kits

We
offer speaker drivers that we use in our own loudspeakers for general sale. You can now
buy the drivers individually or together with a package that shows the crossover
configuration and cabinet drawings together with pairs of ports.

We have spent far more time looking at the efficiency/speaker load issues in
relationship to the low power SE triode amplifiers than anyone else, and I believe that
our solutions are both original and effective. Unfortunately, nature is as cruel as she is
kind when it comes to efficiency, bandwidth, size and price.

We offer our drive units with both Copper and Silver voice coils. The measured
difference is negligible, but the difference in sound between the two is very great
indeed, which again begs the question what it is we measure in relation to what we hear.

All our speaker cabinets are made from different materials. The front
baffle is either plywood or soft chipboard, the wrap is dense MDF and the back is again
either plywood or medium chipboard. No damping materials are applied to any part of the
cabinet, whilst we use some bracing to distribute the cabinet resonances. Do I hear cries
of "cabinet colouration??". Despite what you might think, the guitar-like
structure of our cabinets greatly enhances efficiency, dynamics and sparkle.

We also use only a minimal amount of wadding, and it has to be a specific type,
preferably well-cleaned sheep wool. Positioning is critical, and here experimentation is
recommended, if you build the speakers yourself.

We will sell you a basic kit of crossover parts, a cabinet drawing and a port tube, and
then you can experiment with the cabinet itself to your heart's delight. Alternatively, we
offer a complete tested kit of drivers and crossover, a cabinet drawing and the port tube,
which, if you follow the directions carefully, will make a genuine Audio Note AN-E/D
speaker.

The price is for two speakers; if anyone wants mono only, then halve the price. The
speakers in question are similar to the AN-E/D, which are close to 94 dB efficient in a
cabinet 80 x 36 x 28 centimetres, and are designed to stand close to the rear and side
walls. An ideal partner to single-ended amplifiers, except the ultra-low power variety,
the AN-E/D kits load behaviour has been designed for maximum power bandwidth transfer with
a 300B.

We will not be offering silver versions of these kits, since the cost of all the silver
inductors, capacitors, plus the time it takes to test, match and calibrate the crossover
to the drivers is great, plus the final testing must be done in situ in the cabinet, all
of which make it impossible to offer a comparable quality kit version to the justly famous
AN-E/SE Silver speakers we sell finished - so do not ask!

Work is ongoing on a full range dual cone driver for quarter or half wave horn
applications, so keep your eyes out for future announcements.